Envoy told China U.S. could accept communists in 'Nam

Henry Kissinger quietly acknowledged to China in 1972 that Washington could accept a communist takeover of South Vietnam if that evolved after a withdrawal of U.S. troops, even as the war to drive back the communists dragged on with mounting deaths.

President Nixon's envoy told Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, "If we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina."

Kissinger's remarks surfaced in a collection of papers from his years of diplomacy released by George Washington University's National Security Archive. The collection was gathered from documents available at the government's National Archives and obtained through the research group's declassification requests. advertisement